Does Christian Hedonism Confuse Joy and Faith?
00:00:00.000 | Well, we get about 800 emails per month from listeners like you.
00:00:09.660 | Eight hundred email questions, and I wish we could answer more of the questions, and
00:00:13.820 | we do our best to keep up.
00:00:15.100 | Here's today's question.
00:00:16.100 | "Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:17.100 | My name is Pedro, and I pastor a church in Granada, Spain.
00:00:20.260 | I would like to ask if there's a danger in Christian hedonism confusing joy and faith."
00:00:28.100 | There are dangers everywhere.
00:00:31.940 | It would be a mistake to simply make joy and faith identical.
00:00:38.620 | Not because faith doesn't include delight in God, but because faith, as the Bible presents
00:00:45.900 | it, is more than delight in God.
00:00:49.820 | So I've spent most of my ministry trying to get people to experience faith in such biblical
00:00:59.620 | fullness that it has joy in God as its essence.
00:01:06.160 | And so, yes, the danger exists that this will be misunderstood as being the same as faith.
00:01:13.160 | If I say it's the essence of faith, people might say, "Well, then it's the same as faith."
00:01:18.560 | So let me say a few things that I hope will minimize that danger and clarify what I mean
00:01:26.860 | by faith including joy in God, but being more than joy in God.
00:01:34.180 | Historically—and I think this goes back at least to the Reformation, I think to the
00:01:39.220 | Fathers—saving faith has been seen as these three things.
00:01:45.300 | Actually the Latin words notitia, knowledge, assensus, assent, fiducia, trust—those three
00:01:54.020 | together make up saving faith.
00:01:57.720 | Faith has an object that it knows, and faith assents to the truth and the reliability of
00:02:03.260 | that object, and then faith actually puts trust in that object.
00:02:09.800 | And I think the best exponents of that threefold view have intended, when they say trust, to
00:02:18.740 | mean something like what I mean when I say included in that is a delight in the object
00:02:27.600 | of the trust.
00:02:29.160 | But what I've done is to say maybe we should add a fourth word to those three, and if we
00:02:34.720 | wanted to use a Latin word like beatus or felicitas or gaudium, happiness, felicity,
00:02:41.800 | joy.
00:02:42.800 | Let me give an illustration.
00:02:44.320 | I remember I was with R.C.
00:02:47.280 | Sproul at one of his conferences, and he had just used an illustration of the chair to
00:02:54.960 | illustrate what saving faith is, and he said, "Now you can know that chair is there, and
00:02:59.600 | you can assent to the fact that it'll hold you up, but will you sit in the chair and
00:03:06.320 | thus prove that you're trusting in it?"
00:03:11.040 | And when I came on to speak after him, I repeated that, and I said, "Yes, yes, yes, and do
00:03:17.920 | you love the chair?
00:03:21.080 | And is the chair beautiful?
00:03:23.600 | And are you satisfied with your fellowship with the chair?"
00:03:27.880 | And everybody laughed, of course, and so did R.C.
00:03:31.920 | He knew that that, in fact, did round out the fuller picture of what saving faith is.
00:03:38.400 | If you were trusting Jesus and you thought he were a broken-down, ugly, dilapidated chair
00:03:42.840 | you'd never want to be around, then the trust of sitting in him wouldn't be what the Bible
00:03:48.240 | means by saving faith.
00:03:51.920 | So I want people basically to ask, "Okay, if faith is trust, what are you trusting him
00:04:00.440 | for?"
00:04:02.880 | And if the answer doesn't include Christ himself as our greatest treasure, our greatest hoped-for
00:04:11.480 | satisfaction, I don't think we have saving faith.
00:04:16.080 | If Christ is only a means of getting something other than Christ that you really want, and
00:04:23.120 | you don't really want him, you just use him to get what you really want, I don't think
00:04:27.640 | that's saving faith.
00:04:30.120 | And the Gospel of John, I think, makes that pretty clear in a couple of ways.
00:04:34.320 | You know, everybody knows John 1, 11 and 12.
00:04:38.000 | He came to his own.
00:04:39.520 | His own people did not receive him, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his
00:04:45.160 | name, he gave the right to become the children of God.
00:04:48.320 | So believing is a receiving of Jesus for who he is.
00:04:54.280 | And as what, then?
00:04:55.960 | How are you receiving him?
00:04:57.440 | Savior?
00:04:58.440 | Yes.
00:04:59.440 | Lord?
00:05:00.440 | Yes.
00:05:01.440 | And I want to say, "Treasure."
00:05:02.440 | You have to receive Jesus as your treasure, not just receive him as Savior and Lord.
00:05:07.280 | And I think that's made clear in John 6, 35, where Jesus says, "I'm the bread of life.
00:05:13.080 | Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst."
00:05:19.400 | So we're coming to Jesus to have our thirst satisfied in him and our hunger satisfied
00:05:25.640 | in him.
00:05:27.920 | He's the joy that we've always wanted, and we embrace him as that in the act of saving
00:05:35.760 | faith.
00:05:37.380 | So when we have saving faith, what are we trusting Jesus for?
00:05:42.720 | We're trusting him to remove every obstacle and bring us to God as our fullest satisfaction,
00:05:52.120 | 1 Peter 3, 18.
00:05:53.560 | Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us
00:05:59.560 | to God.
00:06:01.080 | That's what we're trusting him to do.
00:06:03.040 | And so delight in God as our all-satisfying goal and treasure is in faith.
00:06:11.800 | So that's what he died for, that's what we trust him for, and trusting him to bring us
00:06:17.520 | to God means trusting him that God is our fullest soul's satisfaction.
00:06:24.080 | So here's my conclusion.
00:06:26.000 | Yes, faith includes knowing the fact of Christ and assenting to the truth of the fact and
00:06:33.640 | trusting in him and treasuring him as the best promise of all.
00:06:41.780 | So faith is more than being satisfied in God.
00:06:46.080 | So the question was, is there a danger of confusing them or making them mean the same
00:06:51.880 | thing?
00:06:52.880 | And yes, the danger's there, but I hope I've made clear it is an essential part of saving
00:06:58.320 | faith, but it's not the whole thing.
00:07:00.440 | Excellent.
00:07:01.440 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:03.400 | And thank you, Pedro, for the question.
00:07:04.920 | Another wonderful text on the relationship between faith and joy is found in 2 Corinthians
00:07:09.000 | 24 in the context of pastoral ministry.
00:07:12.040 | See episode number 303 of the Ask Pastor John series in an episode we titled "The Greatest
00:07:16.760 | Threat to Pastoral Ministry."
00:07:18.960 | For more, again, that's episode number 303.
00:07:21.940 | On Monday, we're back with another new episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:07:25.440 | So how is divine election not divine favoritism?
00:07:30.080 | I'll ask Pastor John that very question on Monday.
00:07:32.280 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:33.280 | Have a wonderful weekend.
00:07:34.360 | [END]
00:07:34.760 | 1.
00:07:35.760 | Is there a danger of confusing them or making them mean the same thing?
00:07:36.760 | 1.
00:07:37.760 | Is there a danger of confusing them or making them mean the same thing?
00:07:38.760 | 2.
00:07:39.760 | Is there a danger of confusing them or making them mean the same thing?
00:07:40.760 | 3.
00:07:41.760 | Is there a danger of confusing them or making them mean the same thing?
00:07:42.760 | 4.